In the early morning of 23 March 1928, two workers who were on their way to their shift discovered a body in front of the house at Schultenstrasse 11 in Gladbeck, a small town in the northern part of the industrial district of the Ruhr. 1 The men woke the physician Dr. Lutter, who lived close by. Dr. Lutter, after realizing that the person in question was beyond his help, went to his friend Adolf Daube, headmaster [Rektor] of the local Lutherschule, a protestant primary school, who lived at Schultenstrasse 11, and called the police. When Lutter and Daube stepped out to have a look at the body, Adolf Daube suddenly exclaimed, "But, this is my boy!" 2 The corpse was indeed that of Helmut Daube, Adolf Daube's nineteen-year-old son. Police from Gladbeck's criminal investigation department arrived twenty minutes later. 3 Daube's father knew that the night before his son had been out drinking with Karl Hussmann, a friend and former classmate. They had attended a recruiting evening [Keilabend] of the local branch of the right-wing student fraternity Alte Burschenschaftler in Buer, an hour's walk from Gladbeck. After Lutter found out that Hussmann and Daube had left the pub and headed back home together, he called Hussmann. Karl Hussmann answered the call rather quickly, given that he had been drinking the night before. Born in Guatemala in 1908, he was a half-orphan: his father had died on a journey from Guatemala to Germany in 1921. Therefore, Hussmann lived with foster parents, the family of the headmaster of a protestant school in Gladbeck-Rentfort, the Kleiböhmers. Hussmann considered himself Daube's closest friend. 4 Both young men had participated in a bible-reading "Crime and Criminal Justice in Modern Germany" Edited by Richard F. Wetzell is available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. This edition is supported by Knowledge Unlatched. OA ISBN: 978-1-78533-657-7. Not for resale.

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This article examines the importance and the effects of crime news and courtroom journalism for modern societies, taking a global perspective. Mass media starting in the middle of the nineteenth century identified criminal courts as important places that allowed for popular and often-sensational stories of transgression and order. In the United States, in Europe, and in Asia, popular dramas based on criminal trials that appeared in the newspaper stimulated important societal debates, questioning the very notion of modern law and its application. However, it is argued that future research needs to pay more attention to the narratives and effects of courtroom reporting on democracy, both past and present.

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